April Fools' Day Marketing Strategies That Ended in Disaster

Blog Post

April 01, 2020

Three April Fools' Jokes That Made Us Laugh(Because They Ended in Disaster)

Companies engaging in April Fools’ horseplay is, more often than not, cringeworthy—like your weird uncle telling racy jokes at Thanksgiving level of cringe. Sometimes these pranks manage to cross the cringe barrier only to get into so bad it’s good territory. Like the examples below. These April Fools’ pranks are hilarious not because they were done with style, but because they ended up in disaster. Enjoy!

1. Gmail Mic Drop put whole conversations on mute

You’d think that a company that loves April Fools’ pranks as much as Google would know better. Seriously, they’ve been doing this sort of thing for two decades now and it’s noteworthy enough that Wikipedia put together a yearly list. Still, even the best get it wrong sometimes, and that’s precisely what happened in 2016 when Gmail introduced Mic Drop.

The prankHate it when someone adds you to an email conversation that turns into a never-ending thread that you couldn’t care less about? You could use the built-in Mute feature to silence all those unwanted emails, but that wasn’t nearly cool enough for Gmail’s development team. So for April Fools’ 2016 they introduced Mic Drop, which would mute the conversation and insert a mic drop animation into your outgoing response. It was like telling the world, I care so little about this convo that I’m going to let a minion tell you off.

What went wrong

Because the Send + Mic Drop button was right next to the regular Send button, some Gmail users clicked it by accident, meaning they never heard back from the people they were emailing. On top of that, there was a bug that would mute your emails even if you hit the standard Send button: if you pressed Send + Mic Drop without including any recipients, you’d get an error message; if you’d then add recipients and click the standard Send button, your email would go out with a Mic Drop anyway.

The backlash was so quick that Google had to turn off the feature and issue an apology mere hours after launch. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quick enough for the poor writer who posted this message on Gmail’s help forum:

Thanks to Mic Drop I just lost my job. I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I sent my articles to my boss and never heard back from her. I inadvertently sent the email using the "Mic Drop" send button. There were corrections that needed to be made on my articles and I never received her replies. My boss took offense to the Mic Drop animation and assumed that I didn't reply to her because I thought her input was petty (hence the Mic Drop). I just woke up to a very angry voicemail from her which is how I found out about this "hilarious" prank.

At least people kept their complaining online and did not pursue legal action—which is not something I can say about the next entry on this list.

2. Hooters rewarded hard work with a toy Yoda

April Fools’ pranks and puns go together like peanut butter and jelly in most cases. But when you use the prank to make a promise and then you use the pun to get out of that promise, they go together like a brick and a glass house—a combo that will never end well in any version of the multiverse.

The prank

Back in 2001, Hooters decided to run a contest and promised a brand new Toyota to the server who sold the most beer. Things seemed pretty clear-cut: sell the most beer and you get a car. What’s there to misunderstand?

What went wrong

The server who won the contest, Jodee, found out that Hooters never wanted to give away a free car. When she went to claim her prize, instead of a Toyota she got a toy Yoda—aren’t puns fun and a cool way of getting out of the promise you made to your hardest working employees? That might be considered funny on the Earth GC8324 version of the multiverse, but on this Earth it’s simply considered a bad move—made even worse by the fact that Jodee’s manager repeatedly said the prize was a real Toyota car and that the contest was not a stupid prank.

In a response that came as surprise only to the people at Hooters, Jodee got a lawyer and sued her employer. The suit was settled a year later, and I assume that Jodee got much more than a toy Yoda out of this.

3. Taco Bell bought the Liberty Bell

When you’re a big-name company and you pull an April Fools’ joke, you want people to be fooled—but at the same time you want them to understand that it’s a joke. If they don’t get that, they might get angry; and when that happens, then they’re going to make sure you know about it. Didn’t this list make that crystal clear by now?

The prank

Back in 1996, Taco Bell rolled out a full-page press release in the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today and three other major newspapers. In it they proudly proclaimed that they bought one of America’s most historic symbols: the Liberty Bell.

In an effort to help the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures, said the press release. It will now be called the "Taco Liberty Bell" and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt.

What went wrong

The federal government couldn’t possibly sell the Liberty Bell for the very simple reason that it doesn’t own it, the City of Philadelphia does—and they’re not about to sell it anytime soon. To anyone who knew this fact, Taco Bell’s press release was obviously an April Fools’ prank. (Also, to anyone who bothered to check the date on the press release.)

But people aren’t going to let a simple thing like facts get in the way of their anger, so they picked up their phones and called Taco Bell and the National Park Service in Philadelphia to express their outrage. Thousands of calls poured in, prompting Taco Bell to issue another press release and reassure the public that it was all an April Fool’s prank. They also pledged $50K to the upkeep of the Liberty Bell, which might seem like a lot of money until you find out that this marketing strategy generated about $25 million worth of free publicity at the time—in today’s money that figure would be closer to $41 million. It’s because of this that Taco Bell’s April Fool’s prank is considered one of the most successful marketing stunts of all time.

April Fools’ Day is a centuries-old tradition that gives businesses of all sizes the chance to try out some playful marketing strategies. And to be honest, we definitely need something to laugh about right now. No matter how serious or silly you want to go, Harte Hanks has the resources and expertise to come up with a winning campaign that will entertain your customers and put a smile on everyone’s faces.

Aaron Ludwig

Aaron is VP, Global Strategic Accounts at Harte Hanks. For 18+ years, Aaron has been building integrated direct marketing solutions for global B2B firms. He's had the pleasure of working with top technology and manufacturing brands building solutions that support their needs and successfully deliver their desired results.

Adi Clark

Adi Clark

Alan John Kittle

Alan John Kittle

Global Executive Creative Director

With over 25 years’ industry experience, Alan’s been leading award-winning integrated agency creative departments since 2006. He possesses extensive sector knowledge and is a master of the complete creative process – from brand creation to lead generation.

He promotes his passion for big thinking and ‘ideas first, channels second’ mentality within his teams, by always looking for ways to encourage disruptive and brave creative decisions from his clients. Involved in all of Harte Hanks’ creative relationships with global brands including Samsung, Progressive, Bank of America and Sony, Alan loves creating ground-breaking content that wins awards and drives ROI.

Alan Kittle

Alan Kittle

With over 25 years’ industry experience, Alan’s been leading award-winning integrated agency creative departments since 2006. He possesses extensive sector knowledge and is a master of the complete creative process – from brand creation to lead generation.

He promotes his passion for big thinking and ‘ideas first, channels second’ mentality within his teams, by always looking for ways to encourage disruptive and brave creative decisions from his clients. Involved in all of Harte Hanks’ creative relationships with global brands including Samsung, Progressive, Bank of America and Sony, Alan loves creating ground-breaking content that wins awards and drives ROI.

Alana Griffith

Alana Griffith

Alana Griffiths

Alana Griffiths

Biography

Alex Gill

Alex Gill

Putting his decade of experience in B2B and B2C marketing to good use, Alex realizes integrated, metric-driven marketing strategies that boost sales and deliver impressive ROI across verticals. From buyer journey definition and demand generation to personas and marketing automation, he thrives on developing effective solutions, cementing strong relationships and growing profit with a pragmatic, customer-focused approach. Sports mad, Alex loves the NFL, the NBA and just about every other sport. In fact, he often leverages the power of data and analytics to manage his Fantasty Football teams more effectively…

Andrew Harrison

Andrew Harrison

As EVP, Contact Centers & CHRO, Andrew shares responsibility for leading Harte Hanks operations and is directly responsible for Customer Experience Support, delivering customer support, demand generation, and back office marketing services to some of the world’s best-loved brands. With almost 20 years at the company, Andrew brings a well-rounded perspective on the business and approach to leadership.

Andrew Womack

Andrew Womack

Anthony Figgins

Anthony Figgins

Anthony Ulwick

Anthony Ulwick

Tony Ulwick is the pioneer of jobs-to-be-done theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and the founder of the strategy and innovation consulting firm Strategyn. He is the author of “What Customers Want” (McGraw-Hill) and numerous articles in Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review.

Anubhav Mishra

Anubhav Mishra

Anubhav leads Wipro’s Connected Customer Experience business delivering services across marketing, sales, commerce, digitization, automation, API, modernization, mobility and user experience in the Americas. He also manages the mobility and UX engineering practice globally. With over 20 years of experience in building software, Anubhav has contributed to innovative and award-winning programs around digital transformation and customer experience. He is passionate about conversational bots and supports clients in adopting them as part of their transformation initiatives..

Asha Rangaraj

Asha Rangaraj

As a Director in Harte Hanks' Consulting Services Practice, Asha helps to spearhead CMO advisory engagements ranging from Outcome-Driven-Innovation efforts to go-to-market strategy work to marketing automation and lead generation work. She is an accomplished management consulting professional with deep experience in the Healthcare, Insurance, Health & Wellness, CPG, Telecom and IT Services industries.

Barbara Basquill

Barbara Basquill

Biography

Ben Chacko

Ben Chacko

Biography

Brett Eckrich

Brett Eckrich

Candi Williams

Candi Williams

Creating content that captures the audiences’ attention and helps brands engage people in the most powerful ways – that’s Candi’s job. Leading the copywriting fold in our Bristol creative team, this Senior Copywriter is as enthusiastic about conjuring up big, bang-on-brief ideas as she is writing thought leadership articles and creating snappy but super effective social posts.

From crafting concepts to polishing paragraphs, she prides herself on getting to the heart of even the most complex topics to make sure every piece of copy shines. When she’s not waging the war against boring content, you can probably find her adding to her ever-blossoming stationary collection, cooking up a storm in the kitchen or testing our her recent wine qualification.

Chris Field

Chris is our Head of Privacy at Harte Hanks. Focused on privacy management frameworks designed to support privacy and enable informed business decisions in dynamic environments, Chris helps firms to design, implement, manage and optimize their information security.

Chris Ronald

Chris Ronald

CHRISTIAN SARKAR

CHRISTIAN SARKAR

Craig Murray

Craig Murray

Biography

Dan Rubin

Dan Rubin

Head of Analytics, Consumer Brands

As Head of Analytics, Consumer Brands at Harte Hanks, Dan’s focus is on analytic leadership and consultative design of customer-centric solutions. He helps brands understand the power of data, as well as how insights can be actionable and impact omnichannel marketing strategies and programs.

Dave Francis

Dave Francis

David Chandler

David Chandler

As SVP of Client Services, David’s role is to oversee client relationships and the disciplines of the agency that drive them. He builds cross functional working teams to deliver against the individual needs of each client, and he plays a hands-on role in on-boarding new clients to ensure that the foundations are in place for a successful working relationship. David boasts 18+ years of experience in both client-side and agency positions, leading teams to deliver cross-channel campaigns for B2B and B2C brands—locally and globally.

David Rodnitzky

David Rodnitzky

David is founder and CEO of 3Q Digital, Harte Hanks’ digital marketing agency. Prior to 3Q Digital, he held senior marketing roles at several Internet companies, including Rentals.com, FindLaw, Adteractive, and Mercantila. David currently serves on advisory boards for several companies, including Marin Software, MediaBoost, Mediacause, and a stealth travel start-up.

David Rodnitzy

David Rodnitzy

David is founder and CEO of 3Q Digital, Harte Hanks’ digital marketing agency. Prior to 3Q Digital, he held senior marketing roles at several Internet companies, including Rentals.com, FindLaw, Adteractive, and Mercantila. David currently serves on advisory boards for several companies, including Marin Software, MediaBoost, Mediacause, and a stealth travel start-up.

DESHELIA SPANN

Deshelia Spann

DeShelia is an award-winning digital marketing strategist with over 12 years of expertise in go-to-market planning, persona development, customer engagement, content strategy, search, analytics, sales enablement and social media for B2B organizations. Her innovative approach to solving complex marketing challenges has delivered powerful results for her clients and garnered the respect of her peers. DeShelia’s unique background in tech, healthcare, and consumer marketing provides a great blend of interactive digital marketing and innovative business technology.

Elizabeth Crouch

Elizabeth Crouch

Elizabeth is Senior Marketing Manager at Usermind, where she manages digital, creative, and events. Prior to Usermind, she managed marketing communications and brand strategy at PitchBook Data, Moz, and zulily.

Frank Grillo

Frank Grillo

Frank Grillo, former Harte Hanks CMO, brought creativity and an emphasis on customer centricity to the Harte Hanks brand. With more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, Frank has helped many brands expand and transition their marketing strategies through periods of significant change, innovation and disruption in the marketplace. He was laser-focused on two critical needs—defining solutions for digital and data, and raising the Harte Hanks profile with external audiences like media, analysts and investors.

Greg Costello

Greg Costello

Greg Costello is a copywriter, associate creative director, husband, father, Brooklynite, bounty hunter, crossword puzzle solver, and one of those is a lie. If you have any projects that will allow him to write and compose a jingle, please reach out.

Harte Hanks

Harte Hanks

Heather Anding

Heather Anding

Biography

Heather Curtis

Heather Curtis

Heather Curtis, Marketing Automation Analyst, has 10 years of marketing experience across a wide range of industries including legal, pharmaceutical, and technology. She is passionate about helping clients take their marketing efforts to the next level with digital and automated tactics for fully integrated results-driven campaigns. She also enjoys craft beer and running half marathon races around the world. Follow her on Twitter @HeatherMktg

Iain Fuller

Iain Fuller

Iain is a copywriter at Harte Hanks and a specialist in creating compelling and engaging copy and content to helps businesses communicate their brand, products and services.

Ioana Popescu

Ioana Popescu

As Marketing Services Manager, Ioana has more than 12 years experience in making sense of customer data and trying to figure out the context in which businesses can thrive. Amongst other things, Ioana specializes in transforming social conversation into actionable insights for large B2B tech clients, providing value through new and innovative ideas of doing business.

JD Metcalf

JD Metcalf

As Vice President, Marketing Strategy at Harte Hanks, JD has a consistent record of creating and executing marketing strategies that achieve industry-leading performance. For example, he has launched integrated campaigns that increased customer share of wallet by over $300 million. He has achieved customer retention 6.1% above industry peers by creating an automated one-to-one omnichannel new customer onboarding program. And JD has led the development, creation, and launch of customer loyalty CRM programs that consistently produced results 79% above industry average. He currently specializes in marketing in the financial services industry.

Jeannette Kocsis

Jeannette Kocsis

Biography

Jennifer Miles-Losapio

Jennifer Miles-Losapio

Jennifer brings 13+ years of marketing and product management/innovation experience to Harte Hanks. As Director of Innovation and Growth, Jennifer leads the positioning of Harte Hanks' marketing technology solutions—which includes the modernization of our customer data, data management, and advanced analytics platforms..

John Deighton

John Deighton

John is Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is an authority on consumer behavior and marketing, with a focus on digital and direct marketing. John is the former director of the Journal of Interactive Marketing and is currently developing a course on Big Data in Marketing. He founded the HBS Digital Marketing program and taught Digital Marketing Strategy. His research on marketing management and consumer behavior has been published in a variety of journals (for example, the Journal of Consumer Research and the Harvard Business Review). John has a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Cape Town.

Jon Dome

Jon Dome

Jon Dome, VP of Marketing, specializes in marketing strategy and customer experience management. He has a strong track record building and sustaining high performance client satisfaction teams. Jon leverages the Jobs-to-be-Done methodologies popularized by Tony Ulwick and Clayton Christensen to underpin new frameworks for marketers to optimize buyer’s journeys. A motivational team leader and an articulate communicator, Jon has a talent for driving customer-centric cultures.

Jonathan Cayton

Jonathan Cayton

Jon is a Senior Business Director at Harte Hanks and is located in our Uxbridge, UK location. He has over 20 years of experience working with global B2B clients to build pipeline and drive sales through multichannel marketing programs. With expertise in the B2B technology sector, Jon is a results-focused, strategic thinker that specializes in designing and executing integrated, metric-driven sales and marketing strategies that deliver ROI.

Jonathan Dome

Jonathan Dome

Karen Puckett

Karen Puckett

Karen served as CEO of Harte Hanks from 2015 to 2018 and served as one of the company’s directors for nine years. She also brought nearly 15 years of COO and president experience in the telecom, cloud and managed services industries in both consumer and business segments, stemming from her time at CenturyLink, Inc. During her tenure there, she was instrumental in leading the company’s transformation from a local telephone business to an industry leader in advanced communications services, and driving revenue growth from $1.5 billion to more than $18 billion. Karen has a proven track record of successfully growing a company both organically and through acquisitions (she’s overseen 15 of them) and in navigating a business through shifts in industry dynamics.

Karl Hellman

Karl Hellman

Karl Hellman is a new breed of consultant, speaker, and writer, combining fascinating “real life” marketing stories with powerful principles of marketing. Karl’s astuteness and humor quickly engage his clients and audiences, and he is a sought-after speaker and guest lecturer. He has been a guest teacher and speaker in corporate settings, as well as at a number of colleges and universities. He earned his Doctorate in Business Administration at Georgia State University, where his dissertation topic was “Optimizing Investment in Different Levels of Key Account Relationships.

Karl is the founder and president of Resultrek, a global marketing and sales consulting, training and coaching firm dedicated to creating great marketers and sales people. In his practice he incorporates the principles and best practices outlined in 'The Customer Learning Curve', his dissertation, and other writings to help marketers collaborate with sales, operations, and customers to create and capture value.

Kate Sullivan

Kate Sullivan

As Vice President of Digital Engagement at Harte Hanks, Kate is passionate about creating experiences and products that keep pace with evolving customer needs and deepen brand engagement and advocacy. Kate also specializes in helping firms identify emerging channels through which consumers want to engage.

KN Kasibhatla

Korey Thurber

Korey Thurber

As Chief Data and Analytics Officer for Harte Hanks, Korey Thurber manages ideation, development & delivery for customer analytics and data solutions. With more than 20 years of experience managing large international teams of data scientists, analysts & data solutions providers, Korey has helped many brands to successfully adapt & integrate analytics to develop, execute and optimize marketing strategies across diverse online and offline media. His extensive knowledge & experience has made him a valuable asset for many clients across multiple industry verticals including Financial Services, Wealth Management, Retail/CPG and Non-Profit.

Kylie Alexander

Kylie Alexander

Kylie is an innovative, goal-oriented Marketing Segment Manager for Financial Services. She has over five years of marketing experience in financial services, mental health and recruiting. She enjoys the unique challenges of financial services marketing, including compliance and regulatory requirements and the ever-evolving technological advancements. Kylie has a BA and BS from Arizona state and has completed several graduate-level courses in marketing and finance. Fun fact: Kylie grew up in her dad’s insurance office and recently married a financial advisor—she just can’t get away from the industry!;

Kylie Peters

Kylie Peters

Kylie is an innovative, goal-oriented Marketing Segment Manager for Financial Services. She has over five years of marketing experience in financial services, mental health and recruiting. She enjoys the unique challenges of financial services marketing, including compliance and regulatory requirements and the ever-evolving technological advancements. Kylie has a BA and BS from Arizona state and has completed several graduate-level courses in marketing and finance. Fun fact: Kylie grew up in her dad’s insurance office and recently married a financial advisor—she just can’t get away from the industry!.

Lane Yard

Lane Yard

As Director Business Development, Lane works with clients in financial services and insurance markets to understand and meet their marketing needs. Lane brings value to the table by asking the right questions of—and listening to—his clients, empowering them to interact contextually with their own customers, through direct and digital channels.

Laura Watson

Laura Watson

Laura Watson, Director of Strategy, has 16 years of marketing strategy experience in the financial services industry, managing direct and digital marketing teams. Passionate about integrated, omnichannel marketing, Laura combines strategic insight with results-driven methodology to help clients prove the incremental value of their marketing efforts. In her spare time, she enjoys helping with her family’s winery and fifth generation maple syrup business.

Linda Clasen

Linda Clasen

Biography

Maitreyi (MJ) Jha

Maitreyi (MJ) Jha

Marcy Strauss Axelrod

Marcy Strauss Axelrod

Biography

Marla Schilling

Marla Schilling

Marla Schilling, Marketing Manager, focuses on digital marketing, demand generation and marketing communications. She earned her BS at Ithaca College, with studies in Health Sciences and her Master’s at the University of Northern Colorado, with studies in Exercise Physiology.

Matt Pollock

Matt Pollock

As Vice President of Solution Sales at Harte Hanks, Matt uses his 20 years of experience in fulfillment operations to manage and evaluate fulfillment operations and market solutions. He is responsible for business strategy and consulting, and developing strategic plans for multi-site distribution of literature and product sample programs. Matt's expertise extends to unit management, digital printing and print-on-demand, small package shipping and all aspects of warehouse and fulfillment operations.

Michael Behrenhausen

Michael Behrenhausen

Michael is a Denver-based content writer for Harte Hanks specializing in marketing copywriting, editing and design. His hobbies include music, travel, film and reading.

Michael Krueger

Michael Krueger

Biography

Michele Fitzpatrick

Michele Fitzpatrick

Michele Fitzpatrick, Vice President, Consulting, is an experienced relationship marketing strategist and customer experience consultant. Her focus is helping major brands to better understand and connect with consumers throughout the buyer journey and across the customer lifecycle. Michele has 20+ years of experience improving customer relevance and engagement to deliver brand impact for retail, consumer brands, automotive, financial services, insurance, pharmaceuticals and associations.

Mike Hastings

Mike Hastings

As the SVP of Marketing Technology, Mike leads the delivery of our marketing services to our clients. He brings over 20 years of experience leading CRM, as well as direct and digital marketing programs that deliver results. Mike has held both agency and client-side roles, allowing him to understand and cater to the challenges each partner faces.

Mike has been part of the Harte Hanks team since 2013 and has held roles in sales and account management, including leading the consumer and automotive verticals. He is passionate about helping brands master the technology and develop the capabilities necessary to deliver groundbreaking digital marketing.

Natalia Gallur

Natalia Gallur

Born in Valencia, Spain, Natalia moved North East to Belgium after gaining her Master’s degree in Audiovisual Communication and she’s been working her magic in our Hasselt office since 1998.

After spending the first four years managing several multichannel marketing programs for a range of technology companies, Natalia redirected her career towards the pharmaceutical vertical. She now works closely with her clients to implement and deliver international omnichannel in the areas of patient support and clinical trials.

Natasha Silensky

Natasha Silensky

As a Senior Consultant in Harte Hanks' Consulting Services Practice, Natasha helps drive client ROI through customer experience efforts, voice-of-the-customer work and customer journey diagnostics. Natasha also has experience working in healthcare, IT Services, food and beverage, and non-profit sectors, where she has spearheaded marketing automation, social media strategy and web analytics efforts.

Nick LaBran

Nick LaBran

Nick works in Social Media Intelligence at Harte Hanks and is responsible for providing social media listening and analytics, identifying and tracking emerging trends and threats, crafting recommendations to further business goals based on social data, and more

Nicole Bump

Nicole Bump

Nicole Bump, Director of Content Marketing, is responsible for developing the Harte Hanks content strategy, bringing this strategy to life through the editorial board, generating much of the company's content and managing the Harte Hanks social presence. A writer at heart, Nicole also enjoys evaluating ways in which new technologies can enable better content production, distribution and measurement.

Paula Crerar

Paula Crerar

Paula is VP of content marketing and programs at Evergage, responsible for driving thought leadership, brand awareness and conversions. She has 25 years of experience developing and managing content marketing and go-to-market strategies at leading tech firms including Brainshark, Salary.com Dragon Systems and Lotus Development. Paula earned an MBA from Babson College and a BS in management from Boston College.

Rich Romig

Rich Romig

Rich Romig is Executive Creative Director at Harte Hanks. Rich has over 22 years of experience in direct-response, general and healthcare advertising, with a special focus on CRM and eCRM for many top U.S. brands. He has worked on relationship marketing programs for well-known clients such as Mazda, Procter & Gamble, Ortho-McNeil, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and Johnson & Johnson.

Rusty Langford

Rusty Langford

In his 25+ years in the customer services industries, Rusty has been involved in all aspects of direct marketing and customer management. He is currently responsible for client management for all contact center programs at Harte Hanks. He has a broad array of customer experiences, including traditional customer support, multichannel support (including social support programs), lead management and web-based initiatives for clients like Samsung, Microsoft, Major League Baseball, HBO and Barnes & Nobel.

Ryan Moats

Ryan Moats

Ryan Moats, Consumer and Retail Segment Manager, has over 12 years of connecting people and brands within the retail and consumer brands industries. He is responsible for planning, development and implementation of marketing strategies, marketing communications and customer journey activities designed to increase sales and brand awareness for clients in these industries.

Sam Kwietniak

Sam Kwietniak

Sam Kwietniak specializes in alchemizing the alphabet. His work has been published in cocktail menus, design magazines, home improvement stores, commuter trains, airwaves, and inboxes around the world. A proud citizen of Philadelphia, he enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of fine chocolate.

Sana Ansari

Sana Ansari

Biography

Scott Rhodes

Scott Rhodes

Scott serves as head of Digital Delivery at Harte Hanks and is a 20-year passionate veteran of the digital marketing and business consulting space. In his role, Scott oversees the global marketing platform teams, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Eloqua, and Marketo. Scott also provides thought leadership and guidance on highly successful implementations of our digital marketing solutions, helping our clients to become best-in-class digital marketing organizations. Prior to Harte Hanks, Scott worked for top agencies and startups in the space, including Sapient | Razorfish, and TMi (McCann Erickson) to support fortune 500 Brands’ digital transformations. He has also served as an advisor to technology firms including Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget).

Sean Mcentee

Sean Mcentee

Biography

Seth Romanow

Seth Romanow

Simon Lodge

Simon Lodge

Senior Creative Strategist

Working in the center of the creative problem solving process, Simon helps brands untangle complex digital, marketing and business challenges. He achieves this through the development of leading strategies that shape sophisticated creative ideas.

His background is as impressive as his strategic expertise: Simon has worked with both Consumer and B2B clients across a number of verticals including products, telco, and media & high tech. He’s an advocate of innovative and results-driven marketing, and is currently exploring the effect of disruptive technologies on the marketing agenda with leading brands.

Stacey Butterworth-Smith

Stacey Butterworth-Smith

Account Manager

Stacey joined the Harte Hanks Bristol team as an Account Executive and it wasn’t long before her calm-under-pressure ethos and project delivery skills earned her a promotion. Working across a number of key clients, Stacey’s role focuses on working with the team to smoothly deliver work that meets and exceeds clients’ needs.

Her breadth of experience in creative delivery spans from multi-touch email campaigns to awe-inspiring video production. She’s also a longstanding member of the social team and, subsequently, an expert in organizing pirate boat trips Christmas parties and other fun activities for the team.

Stacey Greene

Stacey Greene

Stacey Green, Head of Solution Services for Contact Center, leads a team dedicated to applying technology to create smarter interactions for our customers. She specializes in interaction optimization, deflection and multi channel customer support. This includes deploying, configuring, enhancing and integrating contact center technology across phone, web, video, chat, email, sms and social channels.;

Steve Acuna

Steve Acuna

Steve Acuna, VP of Segment Marketing, specializes in go-to-market strategy and has been instrumental in developing Harte Hanks’ Game Board approach to market segmentation. He and his team are responsible for determining Harte Hanks target segments and developing and executing on strategic plans to reach these segments. Prior to Harte Hanks, Steve has been integral to developing market strategy at CenturyLink and Cypress Communications.

Tej Bhattarai

Tej Bhattarai

Tej is a Marketing Campaign Director at Harte Hanks and leads cross-functional teams to plan and implement omnichannel direct marketing campaign engagements. With over 17 years of experience, Tej specializes in enterprise marketing management (EMM) platforms, such as cross-channel campaign management, real-time offer management, customer life cycle/behavioral and business rules-driven trigger management.

Terry Arnold

Terry Arnold

Terry Arnold, Senior Director and Solution Consultant, has extensive experience guiding customers in the design and development of inbound and outbound contact center programs in a wide range B2B and B2C markets. With over 28 years of experience in the development, execution and management of integrated direct marketing programs, Terry has filled an ever-widening array of roles related to managing customer engagements.

Thea Crelin

Thea Crelin

Thea is a results-driven marketing leader with a history of integrating digital solutions with traditional experiential, and engagement marketing. She boasts an impressive record of acquiring new clients, exceeding new and existing client expectations, and positively impacting return on marketing investment. Thea's expertise lies in the financial services industry, encompassing B2B and B2C within banking, insurance and investment.

Tim Smallwood

Tim Smallwood

Biography

Walt Ruday

Walt Ruday

Walt Ruday, Project Management Leader, has more than 15 years of experience managing large scale tactics in digital delivery and information technology. His areas of expertise include cross-functional leadership, business analysis, digital strategy, multichannel marketing, UX design and data analytics, and his industry expertise lies in the healthcare & pharma, entertainment, travel, B2B/B2C and non-profit. Walt’s passion is leading skilled, collaborative teams to strategize and execute ground-breaking solutions that drive powerful business results.